Professional service(s) practices rely on information from disparate sources. A medical practice, for example, may maintain: patient identifying and contact information; medical history records; financial and accounting software to generate bills, process insurance and third party payment claims, and perform accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, and payroll functions; and various other systems. In a hospital or clinical setting, separate software systems typically manage radiology, pharmacy, laboratory, and nursing functions. Private physicians typically use separate software systems for scheduling; accounting; word processing; and retrieving laboratory records. In addition, various expert systems have been developed to assist in diagnosing conditions and devising appropriate treatment therapies. Other software systems provide assistance in selecting appropriate tests and interpreting results.
As a further example, a law practice typically maintains information relating to: clients; matters being worked on for those clients; projects undertaken in connection with those matters; tasks that are necessary to complete those projects, and events relating to those matters and/or projects. These may include, without limitation: identifying and/or contact information for clients, potential clients, adversaries, counsel, foreign associate counsel, witnesses, vendors, experts, investigators, and others involved in the matter or project; billing information; documents, references, exhibits, and other records; email and other electronic records; fact and legal research; correspondence; pleadings; docketing; finance, budgeting, timekeeping, expense, billing, general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, collection, and other financial data; and, potentially, a wide variety of other project management tools.
Document management and/or document assembly systems are typically employed in a legal practice to generate, maintain, manage, and retrieve work product. Many legal practices maintain “libraries” of prior work product, work flow forms, and/or “precedents.” These resources help maintain quality control, providing a knowledge base for training younger attorneys and efficiently generating work product. Graphics, modeling, presentation, and visualization tools are becoming more widely used. In addition, as in medicine, various expert systems are used, particularly in specialized areas of practice, such as litigation, securities, real estate, intellectual property, and others. More recently, the demand for case management systems has increased, particularly among in-house law departments. Case management systems known by the present inventor prior to the present invention, however, shared several of the deficiencies identified below.
Professional service(s) practices typically maintain these types of information in various custom, proprietary, specialized, mass-marketed, and/or open software applications. These applications are not adapted to, and in many instances, are not capable of, cooperating or communicating with one another. Data, therefore, must frequently be converted or re-entered in various applications.
One of the greatest strengths of modern computer networks is their adaptability. They support a wide variety of different software applications and enable users to share work product. The users may be permitted to tailor their computing environment to their individual work patterns. This is highly desirable, yet, this pattern of individualized computing fosters a proliferation of software applications, operating systems, and network management applications. The architecture of computer networks has compounded the difficulties of managing these disparate systems.
Most networks combine various hardware components: personal computers; network and mainframe components; servers and routers; desk tops, laptops, and hand-helds; remote access devices; personal digital assistants (PDAs); wireless access devices; various output devices, and a bewildering array of accessories. Each typically has a different operating system; of different vintage, quality, and capability. Apart from the substantial challenges this imposes on network managers and systems administrators, it has made the ready transferability of data between components more difficult, if not impossible.
In a typical law practice, for example, information systems and software may include, without limitation:                Hard copies of documents, files, specimens, and exhibits;        Physical exhibits and samples;        Electronic records;        Audio, video, voice mail, and other records;        Network Operating Systems software (typically some variant of Windows, i.e., 2000, NT, XP, 98, or 95; IBM OS2; Apple; etc.);        Records Management Systems (files, bar coding, indexers, or specialized records management applications);        Document Assembly Systems (such as “IPDAS” in an intellectual property practice setting, or other document assembly systems);        Document Management Systems (such as Hummingbird; PC DOCS; SoftSolutions; iManage; etc.);        “Knowledge Management” Systems (which are typically customized or proprietary software or some modified version of a Document Management System);        Email systems (ccmail, Notes mail, Microsoft mail, etc.);        Docketing systems (for example, CPI, Dennemeyer, IP Master; Patsy, IPPO, etc., for intellectual property practices; and other docketing systems for securities, tax, litigation, or other practice areas);        Word processing systems (WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, etc.);        Scheduling and calendaring systems (Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook, etc.);        Relationship Management and/or Contact Information (InterAction; Outlook; Notes; Elite Apex; Aptus; customized or proprietary software; etc.);        Litigation Support (Summation; LiveNoteNideoNote; Access; CaseMap/TimeMap; Concordance; Trial Director; JFS Litigator's Notebook; Sanction; Folio Views; iConnect; DB Textworks; Isys; Introspect; BRS Search; RealLegal; E-tech; Ipro; etc.);        Electronic evidence service vendors (Ontrack; Electronic Evidence; Applied Discovery; Fios; Daticon; Deloitte & Touche; and others);        Electronic portals (such as those supplied by vendors such as SV Technology; Plumtree; Sequoia; and others);        Desktop fax software (RightFax; Legal Fax; and others);        Time entry systems (DTE; Carpe Diem; CMS Open; Elite; custom or proprietary systems; etc.);        Accounting systems (Elite; CMS Open; Elite for Windows NT; TMC; Rippe & Kingston; custom or propietary in-house; etc.);        Database applications (Lotus Notes, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Corel Quatro Pro, FoxPro, Lotus 123, Concordance, etc.);        Presentation applications (Microsoft PowerPoint; Corel Presentations; Sanction; Trial Director; etc.);        Project Management support systems (Microsoft Project; Project Gateway, etc.);        Critical path, probability assessment, and risk analysis tools (such as TreeAge software, etc.);        Various specialty applications (such as project management, flowcharting, PERT and GANT charting, budgeting tools, etc.);        Case Management systems (LawPack (Hummingbird); Corprasoft; Elite Information Group; Miratech; ProLaw (West Group); RealLegal; and PWC and other systems support vendors); and        Potentially, a wide variety of other applications software.Data accessed by these various applications may be maintained centrally and/or on a distributed basis. Prior to the present invention, data was not readily transferable between the various applications used in a professional service(s) practice. Typically the data was maintained in a format that was proprietary and, in some cases, exclusive to the single application, or at least not readily portable to other applications.        
Docketing illustrates some of the problems posed by the lack of data transferability in a law practice setting. Both counsel and their clients desire access to certain information maintained in a docket. Professional liability carriers typically require independence and redundancy in docketing, or calendaring, systems. A law firm typically maintains: organization-wide; department-wide; and/or practice group-wide docketing systems, in addition to each individual attorney or professional maintaining their own docket. The organization or department-wide system is typically secured; a limited number of individuals have write access and others have read-only access. While these restrictions help preserve the security, integrity, and reliability of the data, they impair the transferability of the data.
Many docketing systems now include a web-access feature that allows the client, or others outside the law firm to access the data. Yet, these systems generally remain: proprietary; rigid in their formatting; and rigid in their ability to transfer or exchange information with other software applications and to accept related project management and/or financial information. More important, a corporate client retaining multiple outside law firms would be forced to access multiple web sites in order to collect the desired docketing information from each. Centralizing the docket by a third party to derive the client form, the burden shifts to each law firm which still requires visiting several different sites to collect the desired docketing information about its clients. While the client's interests should predominate relative to those of the outside law firm, secure and ready access by all concerned is preferable.
Extranets remain complex and limited in their functionality. Web-based systems have not resolved the fundamental problem that pertinent data is stored in multiple inconsistent formats.
Data maintained in a docketing system (such as addresses, client and matter identifying information, deadline dates, events, tasks, etc.), may also be needed in accounting, word processing, litigation support, case management, risk analysis, database, and other applications. It may be needed by persons both inside and outside the organization. The rigidity of most docketing systems, however, impairs or prevents the data from being readily exchanged with other applications. Consequently, data is typically manually transferred (cut and pasted) or simply key-entered repeatedly in each application in which it is needed, presenting multiple additional opportunities for errors and data corruption.
As a further example, address book applications provide a stark illustration of some of the inefficiencies and problems associated with the lack of application-independence and portability of data used in a professional services practice. In a typical law office, an address is needed by several professionals and support staff: the accounting system to clear conflicts and to open new client matters against which to accrue time and charges; the docketing system, the word processing and document management systems to enable professionals to generate work product, lists of specialized vendors, such as foreign associate counsel; the relationship management systems to enable professionals to conduct client development and business development activities; and the various handheld and portable devices in which the professionals may wish to maintain their personal address data.
The address of a new client, for example, may be entered (typically manually) in an attorney's personal address list when he or she solicits the prospective client initially. In the course of generating or sending materials soliciting the prospective client, the address may be reentered and then maintained in various distributed applications such as business development lists, word processing systems, document management systems, and/or relationship management systems. The same address may even be entered by multiple professionals in the same applications. If the client engages the firm, the address, among other information, will be reentered—typically manually—into the firm's conflicts checking, accounting, and/or time and billing systems. The address will typically be reentered—again manually—into the firm's docketing and/or calendaring systems. As files are created, it will be reentered—again typically manually—in the firm's filing systems. So too, as work product is generated, it is typically reentered into the individual documents as they are created, although one or more of these iterations of the address may be captured at some point in a document management and/or forms generation system, from which it can be used in other documents. As bills are generated, the address is accessed again—either by entering it anew, or from one of the multitude of locations where it already resides—to generate an invoice and cover letter.
As a result, the same intended address now resides in multiple locations in the firm's computer network, each likely being different and possibly containing incorrect and inconsistent information, style, and formatting. At each point where it was entered or used, time is wasted in reentering the same information. At each entry point, there are new opportunities for additional errors being introduced.
These problems extend to databases that are expressly intended to resolve these problems. For example, some relationship management systems are expressly designed to be compatible with certain email, calendaring, and address systems, such as Microsoft Outlook and/or Lotus Notes. Yet, while the data may be portable between the applications to a greater or lesser degree, incompatibilities remain, that have resulted in corruption or loss of the data, or general protection faults. For example, errors and inconsistencies frequently result between Palm databases, Notes databases, and relationship management databases that purport to contain the same information. The format of the data is different in all three and, although some fields are substantially the same, others are different, truncated, or missing. The data is not reliably transferred between them in practice, due to software flaws and/or incompatibilities. Moreover, the undue complexity of these systems makes them difficult for even sophisticated users to use competently. In Applicant's experience, these problems extend to all of the types of data used in a professional service(s) practices.
Some mass-marketed applications have claimed portability, while others have simply ignored or actively resisted it. Generally, word processing applications, due to their widespread use, have been under greater pressure to make their data portable than more specialized applications, such as docketing, accounting, and time and billing applications. Prior to the present invention, none of the applications of which Applicant is aware have achieved the desired level of portability, let alone substantial application independence of their data, with the possible exceptions of applications, such as Adobe Acrobat, that specifically attempt to enhance the portability of data.
Applications, such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, and/or Corel QuartoPro have claimed at various times that some data was substantially portable between several of these applications. Even these limited applications, however, encountered substantial problems in transferring data from one application to another prior to the present invention. Docketing and accounting systems have generally been even more problematic with respect to the portability and/or application-independence of their data.
In some businesses outside the professional service(s) sector, these incompatibility problems have been addressed by massive integration of centralized database applications. This is typically done, enterprise-wide, on an Oracle, SAS, SAP, or other centralized platform, integrating financial and operational data. In a professional services setting, such as law and/or medicine, centralized database applications have generally been disfavored for several reasons. First, the cost and complexity of these types of integration projects have been prohibitive. Second, the rapid evolution of hardware and software further contraindicate the massive investment required for centrally integrated databases. Third, the distributed nature of professional services, as well as security concerns, teach away from massive integration in a professional services setting.
Distributed systems provide lower overall cost and greater flexibility, as well as enhanced availability and security, in the event of a failure of, or attack on, one or more network components. In addition, the need for access to the data by multiple independent parties (clients, their outside counsel, vendors, and others), continues to favor distributed solutions.
Thus, there has long been an unresolved need for secure, reliable, simple data transfer between applications. Prior known approaches have failed to meet this long-felt and unresolved need, particularly in a professional service(s) setting. The commercial software industry has long overlooked professional service(s) markets. Professional service(s) markets, therefore, have had to rely on either mass-marketed software applications that are not adapted to their particular needs, and/or customized and/or proprietary solutions that are expensive, complex, and limited in their flexibility and adaptability.